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Theater Backstage in ‘Avalanche’

What goes on behind the scenes of Iranian theater is the theme of the play ‘Avalanche’ on stage at City Theater in central Tehran.

The play is the newest work of its director Afrooz Foruzand who has returned to theater as a director after a 12-year hiatus, ISNA reported.

Most of the story centers on the revisions a play undergoes to get a performance permit by the competent organization.

“When writing the script, I was concerned about the story being appealing to both the public as well as those in charge of granting permission (for staging),” Foruzand said.

Officials of the Department of Performing Arts at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance watched the show “with tolerance and approved it, as it shows not only their mistakes but also our faults as the performing group,” she said.

On her 12-year absence from Iranian theater, Foruzand said, “It was not like being forced not to work by external factors; in fact, at the beginning I liked to continue my career as a director but I did not enjoy the conditions prevailing in Iran theater at the time so I decided to stay away for some time.”

However, as time went on, she found that it would be difficult to come back after a long gap as audiences’ tastes change and there was no surety that they would adjust to her return.

“I was afraid,” she confessed, and added that this is mostly because she is so meticulous about her productions and wants everything to be done with perfection.

However, she did not give up theater totally during the period and wrote some scripts for other directors that were staged.

Watching ‘Avalanche’, the audiences get to see the outcome of months of tough rehearsals on the stage and to know the problems that directors and actors face as their work is subject to various checks and revisions.